


Midnight Steal

by LitMech (PatrioticFrisbee)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Ficlet, M/M, Older Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-01
Updated: 2011-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-26 18:30:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatrioticFrisbee/pseuds/LitMech
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames contemplates the moonlight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight Steal

Silver moonlight slices the darkness to shreds. It lights up his face like spotlights, carving shadows beneath his cheekbones, eye sockets, and lighting things like his jawline, his lips. It's a soft thing, this midnight steal I take, watching him sleep.

During the day it's starch, coffee, cuff-links and pomade. There's no smile, there's no laughter, it's work, it's bills, it's taxes, it's this or that, Cob or Phillipa, groceries, new phone lines, we have a job and pack your things. There's lines by his eyes during the day, there's lines between his brows during the day. With sunlight comes responsibility, with responsibility comes stress, with stress comes the Point Man. The man of Armani and Gucci and Glocks. Of red dice and leather shoes, scowls and condescension.

With night comes my Darling. My sweet and soft, petite Darling. With sunset comes dimples and smiles, my old T-shirt and take-out, and Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune and a Marlboro he swears he'll quit next time. As the lights go out, his eyes open up, become wide and brown and desperate as his soft hands, the callouses of years of pulling triggers fade and all he knows is 'please' and 'love' and 'hold me tighter'.

With sleep comes a child, and the child makes me smile. No one else sees it. Sure, he's young looking, far older in mind than body, lifetimes spent hooked to a machine. But in sleep he's not even my Darling. He's Arthur. He hogs the covers and kicks when he dreams. He smiles in his sleep in a way he never does awake, day or night. It's soft and serene and so, so innocent; I often feel guilt for looking at him this way, like I'm looking on something forbid God wanted no one to see, not even himself.

With morning comes tousled hair. Comes a groggy morning kiss with awful breath and a sleepy half-smile. He shuffles out of bed and into the bathroom and once that door shuts, behind it he comes Point Man. Becomes the lovechild of an Armory and a Parisian suit tailor. Aggression and determination, hard lines and hard words and a tongue made of steel.

But it's midnight now. And the child is alive and well, and curls it's sleepy fingers around my wrist with no strength at all.

And yet I am anchored, and never could I leave.


End file.
